This is just a proof of concept. They wont need pilots in a couple of years, they will take off and land from base stations dotted about. They can provide functions beyond fixed traditional CCTV at a greatly reduced cost.

Cutter wrote on Feb 15, 2013, 18:27:Do you really trust Big Brother to have your best interests at heart? I'd say the overwhelming majority of people - on both the left and right side of the aisle - are in full agreement that they don't.

Hmm, trust the police? No thanks, there's plenty of corruption that proves you can't trust the police (as a group, not individuals) or politicians (never seen an honest politician at all).

The problem is because they always say it's for XYZ, then it slowly, but inevitably gets expanded to everything else. Just look at London an CCTV. It's supposed to make you safe is it? Yet, crime still continues unabated. The problem with authority - particularly the people like to wield it over other people - is that you give them an inch and they take a mile. It's not like the system isn't abused as it is. It's an issue of trust. Do you really trust Big Brother to have your best interests at heart? I'd say the overwhelming majority of people - on both the left and right side of the aisle - are in full agreement that they don't.

"There are two kinds of people in this world; people who love delis, and people you shouldn’t associate with.” - Damon Runyan

The government is generally far more interested in extracting money from you than stopping real crime, so I see these drones ending up being used to rack up fines (speeding/parking/traffic violations, etc) more than stopping legitimate crime that doesn't make them money...

jdreyer wrote on Feb 15, 2013, 14:17:Drones like that simply make it cheaper to do aerial recon. Not really that different that a helo, except that they're orders of magnitude cheaper so it will be more cost effective for departments to deploy them.

Yeah, I don't really understand the uproar over this. If someone is sitting in a pilot seat it's ok, but if someone's flying it from the ground, it's a horrible violation? We've had choppers flying around spotting things for years now.

My suspicion is that large numbers of people don't understand the difference between military and police drones. They think that there'll be military drones flying around loaded for bear, just waiting to shoot missiles at someone doing 2mph over the speed limit.

xXBatmanXx wrote on Feb 15, 2013, 14:08:Wow...lossen thos e tinfoil hats fellas! Honestly - it isn't going to happen. Even if it does, it will be used in limited scope - it is just wasted manpower. Don't talk to me about software, bla bla bla. It still needs manual application and use. And that isn't going to happen.

What are some if any applications anyway?

The tinfoil hat thing gets thrown around to discredit an opposing view point and I don't feel its justified in this case. We're literally discussing something with a large potential for widespread abuse across a range of different public services, of course it should be taken seriously.

If the public sector funds are so hard to come by and the applications so limited then sensible regulation and oversight shouldn't be a problem, right? I'm all for advancements and keeping up with the times but I don't like the idea of law enforcement being to deploy these without strict oversight and some legal precedence in their application. That's how the rest of the system is, it just makes sense.

Drones like that simply make it cheaper to do aerial recon. Not really that different that a helo, except that they're orders of magnitude cheaper so it will be more cost effective for departments to deploy them. Does this make them easier to abuse? Sure, but it also makes police more effective.

I have a friend who is a state trooper, and he often has to serve warrants and grab bail jumpers. His job would be more effective if there was a drone overhead with a guy on the radio telling him, "the guy's jumped out the back window, and is headed north in the alley," so he could serve that warrant or grab that bail jumper.

I do have a problem with Obama and his use of drones overseas, but this is not that scenario. I also have a problem with his continuation of warrantless wiretapping. This is also not that scenario.

Wow...lossen thos e tinfoil hats fellas! Honestly - it isn't going to happen. Even if it does, it will be used in limited scope - it is just wasted manpower. Don't talk to me about software, bla bla bla. It still needs manual application and use. And that isn't going to happen.

What are some if any applications anyway? I can see them using it for tactical reasons, but not everyday use, it just doesn't have any application.

I don't think you guys realize how expensive each employee is in the public sector. We have a hard time just covering the street with enough people.

Verno wrote on Feb 15, 2013, 11:41:Ugh Dorner talk. You have to be a psycho to go out shooting people for perceived injustice, it's like some bizarro repulsive far right revenge fantasy. It reminded me of watching Law Abiding Citizen which should have been marketed as a comedy. Let's not drag that bullshit into this discussion which has legit implications, it just muddies the water and makes it easier for people to dismiss concerns.

Agreed. Plus, it hinges on "if Dorner is to be believed." His manifesto was called a manifesto, which hurts its credibility, he spent 4 paragraphs discussing being picked on in elementary school, which hurts its credibility, and it was followed by shooting innocent people, which hurts its credibility.

I'll believe Connie Rice over him. She's the attorney and civil rights activist that spent decades suing the LAPD for its racism and recently wrote an excellent book about how drastically it's changed.

Verno wrote on Feb 15, 2013, 11:41:Ugh Dorner talk. You have to be a psycho to go out shooting people for perceived injustice, it's like some bizarro repulsive far right revenge fantasy. It reminded me of watching Law Abiding Citizen which should have been marketed as a comedy. Let's not drag that bullshit into this discussion which has legit implications, it just muddies the water and makes it easier for people to dismiss concerns.

I don't disagree, I was merely using it as an example of corrupt police. The whole "Nothing to worry about, the government will take care of and protect you" mentality is about the last thing I'm going to blindly believe. We already have cameras at nearly every traffic light in the US, do we really need drones flying over head as well?

Ugh Dorner talk. You have to be a psycho to go out shooting people for perceived injustice, it's like some bizarro repulsive far right revenge fantasy. It reminded me of watching Law Abiding Citizen which should have been marketed as a comedy. Let's not drag that bullshit into this discussion which has legit implications, it just muddies the water and makes it easier for people to dismiss concerns.

I have no problem with this. The law says you have no expectation of privacy outside of your cartilage (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curtilage) - anything outside of the walls of your home is considered NOT PRIVATE. Anyone at anytime can "walk through your yard"....yea, those NO TRESPASSING signs....yea about those....

What the law says and what will happen when someone does that are two very different things. Also I don't want CCTVs and an overhead drone fleet watching my every movement, if that doesn't scream governmental abuse then I don't know what will. Instruments of control need to be applied very carefully on society as a whole, less is more.

The locals here priced it out to 8k a unit for the drones they wanted (which apparently have some form of rudimentary IR mapping) and did some "creative" budgeting to make it work, thankfully the town shut down the funding.

Now if people want to deploy drones for surgical strikes on patent trolls, that's something I can get behind

This ^ It's not like cops follow laws all the time either, just look at that Chris Dorner incident. There's no reason to have drones patrolling US skies, 1984 here we come, won't be long now, they just need to succeed in taking all the guns away first.

What did they do wrong there?I mean, other than the shooting random people in pickup trucks, and pretty much everything else. But what, did they do that wouldn't hold up in court had they taken Dorner alive?

Well if Dorner was to be believed which I'm not saying he is, the LAPD is pretty damn corrupt. Still though the idea of drones, military grade or not, patrolling the US doesn't at all sit well with me.

Creston wrote on Feb 15, 2013, 11:14:These aren't military drones controlled from 3000 miles away that can fly for 500 miles. These are tiny little things with a super-small control radius that can fly for a short period of time before recharging. They're really not much better than the kind of RC helicopter you can buy at Amazon.

The trouble is that the law doesn't keep up very well with changes in technology, it's been a problem for a long time. The tech is already making large leaps each successive generation. So in 5 years you might have powerful IR mapping drones with multiple high res cameras that stay up longer and have better software for automation. Where is the law on restrictions at that point though? It's probably back with several previous gen drone techs. And again you run into the give an inch, take a mile issues with the government in general.

I don't think anyone here really thinks Uncle Sam is going to use a drone to watch them changing at night or something, it's the larger implications that matter.

These aren't military drones controlled from 3000 miles away that can fly for 500 miles. These are tiny little things with a super-small control radius that can fly for a short period of time before recharging. They're really not much better than the kind of RC helicopter you can buy at Amazon.

The tiny drone, which was displayed at the hearing and fits disassembled into a small suitcase, can fly for up to 24 minutes at a height of 400 feet and only has a maximum radius of a quarter-mile from the operator. Alameda County Sheriff Gregory Ahearn argued that the drones will be used primarily for search and rescue operations.

If the Sheriff's dept (or whomever, really) wants to blanket an area with this, they basically need to put a trained police officer with equipment every quarter mile. A careful estimate I made without really doing any math whatsoever means that if they wanted to use this for general surveillance across the US, it means they need approximately 945 trillion trained operators. And every one of them needs about 12 drones in order to be able to keep a drone in the air at all times.

If this were used for specific purposes, such as to hunt someone down, or to monitor specific issues, I wouldn't really have a huge issue with it. I'd rather they fly a drone in the air than a helicopter. But of course, it's the government, so they'd find some kind of bullshit to do with it in no time flat.

Ted Poe has been trying to block this, apparently, but seems to get little traction with the dipshitsrepresentatives in Washington.